Page 8 of The Mistletoe Bride and Other Haunting Tales

‘Sickly yellow light.’

I nod. ‘And straight away, you know there’s something wrong down there, don’t you?’ I lean forward. ‘You can smell it, can’t you? Smell of the sea. Of rotting fish.’

He puts his hands over his ears. He doesn’t want to hear any more. He is seeing it all now, smelling it, remembering the cold on his bare skin and the dust and the cobwebs, the decay and damp of a cellar in a seaside town. He doesn’t want to be back at that cellar on that Thursday the twenty-first of October 1965.

But that’s why he’s here. Why we are here.

‘Not blood,’ he says, ‘it was a sweet smell.’

‘You didn’t think it would be so bad, did you? You rolled up your sleeves – didn’t want to spoil that pullover.’

‘Oranges . . .’ he whispers.

‘You pick up the box and carry it down,’ I say, pushing him further. ‘Know you’ve got to do something before she gets back. The smell’s too bad down there. She’s bound to notice.’

‘Ten steps down.’

‘Eight,’ I correct him. ‘Quite a weight, that box. All that stuff in it. Three or four trophies, a shield with his name on it. Bowls, wasn’t it?’

He’s shaking his head, sticking to the first story. ‘Painting and a carriage clock and cuff links and the money.’

‘There all along,’ I say.

He is shaking his head. ‘There all along. Thought it was under the mattress.’ His voice drops to a whisper. ‘Why did she come back? She’d never have known. We would have been all right.’

‘The box was heavy,’ I say.

I see his expression. He’s frightened at how much I know, how much he has already told me. He is staring at me, clear brown eyes, a little yellow. Medication yellow.

‘I could manage.’

I admire his courage, but I can’t let myself be deflected. ‘You have dust on your cuffs, and that annoys you. It’s your best shirt and you need it for the weekend.’

He nods. ‘The Gaumont. Saturday night.’

‘The girl, yes,’ I say, impatiently. We are doing well, but we have to stay in the house. I can’t let him get away from me. We have to go down into the cellar, him and me. Only then will the last pieces of the jigsaw fall into place.

‘So you managed, of course you did. Strong chap like you. On the up.’ I hesitate. ‘But she came back. Called out, didn’t she?’

‘Caught me by surprise.’

‘That’s right, so you slipped. Lost your footing.’

He flushes. ‘It was dark.’

‘Of course it was. Could have happened to anyone, in the dark.’

‘She shouldn’t have come back.’

‘That’s right.’

‘She scared me.’

‘That’s right,’ I say. ‘Her fault really. If she’d left well alone.’

‘Her fault.’

I can see beads of sweat on his forehead, a sickly yellow. Skin sickly yellow. Or is that Turner? Lying on the floor of the cellar, like a dummy. One of those mannequins in Reynolds department store on the front. I pull the handkerchief from my pocket and wipe my face. He does the same – great minds think alike – and he looks better for it.